Germany's Fairy Tale Route: who needs Disneyland?

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Is it really every parent’s duty to grit their teeth and take the children to Walt Disney World in Florida? Or Disneyland Resort in California?

Or Disneyland Paris by way of a middle-class compromise, in the earnest belief that a flânerie along the Boulevard de Buzz Lightyear will be less tacky than nylon princess costumes on the Tomorrowland Terrace in California?

I only ask because it’s one of those terrifying whispers you hear on the labour ward that you choose to ignore or you might just stop pushing.

Without wishing to sound like a snob (although that’s essentially what I am), I’ve always lived in dread of “doing the Disney thing” for myriad reasons: the queues, the hard sell, the whole gaudy mass-entertainment inauthenticity of it.

I was raised on proper fairy tales, shrouded in impenetrable forests and twilit ambiguity; the Brothers Grimm Germanic tales of Snow White repeatedly escaping death, Little Red Riding Hood not quite escaping the wolf and the Pied Piper stealing away Hamelin’s children with no happy ending.

So what better way to fuel my children’s imagination and assuage my maternal guilt than by taking 10-year-old Lily and Tabitha, aged four, on a tour of the real half-timbered towns and hilltop castles associated with some of their best-loved stories?

How thrilling to stay in Sleeping Beauty’s castle! How funny to visit the wooden cottage where Snow White (probably) lived and see the seven dwarves’ carved beds, lined up against the wall! And as for the witch’s kitchen where Gretel cooked for a caged Hansel – why, it was the stuff of dreams!

Or maybe nightmares. But at any rate, the children would have echt memories of real places rather than simply consuming the spoon-fed experiences offered by the theme park industry.

We flew with Ryanair to Frankfurt Hahn, falling for the old canard that it must surely be somewhere near Frankfurt. It really (really) isn’t, but we did reach the city after a 123km drive in a hire car.

Our destination was the Deutsche Märchenstrasse, the German Fairy Tale Route, a winding, well-travelled 600km trail of the places mentioned in the tales of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

This year marks the 200th anniversary celebrations of the first publication of the brothers’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales), a collection of 86 stories that became worldwide classics. To this end, a rolling programme of events is taking place: open-air enactments, puppet shows, concerts and storytelling sessions.

But for the casual visitor, simply setting off, with serendipity as your guide – as indeed happens in the best fairy tales – works every bit as well.

And so it was that before we’d even reached our first stop, the sweet little medieval corner of Hanau, where Jacob and Wilhelm were born in the late 18th century, we were entranced by (and, truth be told, a little scared of) the deep, dark wood that fringed the roads, which was surely home to bears and wolves and Gruffalos.

The Germans are justifiably proud of the Grimms, the pair being first and foremost scholars, who collected and compiled legends. We decided against an equally scholarly, archive-based tour following in their footsteps, in favour of the more whimsical, child-friendly destinations.

In the glorious medieval gem of Alsfeld, (home to Eisenwaren Carl Ramspeck, the best gift shop I’ve ever encountered) we made a pilgrimage to the Märchenhaus, or Fairy Tale House, built in 1628.

It was home to a fabulously kitsch collection of room settings featuring life-size mannequins and models; the wolf wearing grandma’s nightdress in bed, the blackened stove into which Gretel pushed the evil witch, Rapunzel, Cinderella and so on. Upstairs was a collection of doll’s houses spanning 200 years, along with fascinating fairy-tale memorabilia. It was all very unsophisticated, but great fun; both children were entranced.

Next up were the glories of Marburg, a town dominated by its great Gothic castle-palace crowning the hill above the River Lahn. Here we had an excellent guide, Ulli (German guides in my experience are the best and most entertaining in Europe), who took us for coffee and cake in a marvellous old tea room then led us to what was (allegedly) Cinderella’s castle.

Tabitha was slack jawed with wonder at the sight of Cinderella’s giant red slipper; Lily was more fascinated by the gruesome insights into life in the medieval town: the disposal of sewage into the streets, the duelling student Burschenschaften, the pilgrims paying obeisance at the shrine of St Elizabeth of Thuringia.

This was the pattern for the trip and contributed enormously to its success; while Number Two sweetly took everything at face value, Number One was intrigued and fascinated by the legends and folklore behind the stories.

My husband was taken with a tour of the vast mock-medieval bunkers in the spa town of Bad Wildungen, built by the Nazis as air raid shelters and which was earmarked – but never used – as the HQ of the Luftwaffe.

He also made a visit to the nearby Edersee Dam, breached by British Dambusters – an event whose 70th anniversary is commemorated this year, an act of derring-do that saw entire villages being swept away in the catastrophic flooding that followed.

For the younger members of our party, of greater interest was Snow White’s (in German, Schneewittchens) “house”, tucked away in the hills. Again, think “allegedly”.

Was Snow White based on the story of Margaretha von Waldeck, a local beauty whose jealous stepmother forced her to move abroad and who died of poisoning in 1554 aged 21? And were the dwarves actually stunted miners who came to the region as boys to dig for copper and never grew due to long hours spent hunched over in confined tunnels? Who knows, but it certainly raised a pleasing shiver as we surveyed the seven little carved wooden beds.

The Germans are justifiably proud of the Grimm

The key to any driving holiday with children is planning it carefully so jumping in the car is an adventure (with snacks) rather than a whingefest (with tears).

For that very reason, two of the hotels we stayed in were rather larger than we might normally have chosen, but being part of the Maritim chain they had swimming pools, which was a godsend as it made for the perfect splashy incentive at the end of a day’s sightseeing.

But even the children enjoyed the driving bit; the changing landscapes – from sparse heathlands to looming forests that greened into lush valleys and rolling hills.

Heading north, we made our way off the beaten track to Sababurg Castle, the splendid half-ruined 1334 pile surrounded – yes! – by those impenetrable briars, where on the ramparts Sleeping Beauty plays are enacted, sometimes even in English.

Here, we “met” Sleeping Beauty and her Prince Charming, who made up for in costumes what they lacked in romantic chemistry, and ate themed rose-shaped cakes.

Oddly, the tea room was packed with adults. Unlike the saccharine stories served up by Walt, the preponderance of death and darkness means German fairy tales aren’t just for children. For grown-ups there’s plenty of opportunity for a more intellectual examination of the confluence of history and folklore; the Brothers Grimm collected and wrote more than 200 tales, of which we are familiar with only a handful.

At the base of Sababurg was the oldest wildlife park in Europe, dating to 1571, containing wolves, bison and deer, where we idled a couple of pleasant hours being mobbed by greedy goats and stroking the bunny rabbits.

Then it was time to ascend the tower, past the spooky spinning wheel, to find stylish honeymoon suites fit for a princess or a Japanese tourist.

Our final destination was Hamelin, but we made a brief stop in Kassel to visit the Brüder Grimm Museum, which far exceeded the children’s (admittedly) low expectations as there were interactive installations and lots of original fairy-tale illustrations.

We hadn’t planned to keep the best until last, but the half-timbered and Renaissance gem that is Hamelin was magical. The architecture, much of it the particularly florid style known as the Weser Renaissance, was counterpointed by pavements inlaid with silver rats: there were carved rats on the fountain, golden rats on the street signs, rat-shaped cakes in the bakery.

Tours of the town are headed by the Pied Piper (who else?), a fabulously eccentric character in full fig, who piped and emoted in fluent English. He had adults and children alike hooting with laughter – but his was a humour spiked with other-worldly menace.

In summer, giant open-air plays take place in the town, but as we were there out of season, it was left to the Piper – in German the Rattenfänger, or Ratcatcher – who literally led us on a merry dance as we explored the chilling legend of the town’s lost children, who disappeared en masse in 1284.

Were they victims of plague or infanticide? Were they unhappily lured away on a hopeless Children’s Crusade or happily transported eastwards to colonise the sparsely populated regions of central Europe? Was the Piper the personification of death?

The Hamelin museum’s fantastical “automated” theatre show featuring mechanical creations constructed from scythes, cheese graters, keys and other metal implements, provided a moment of poignancy; when it came to a close with a sombre parade of 130 ghostly nightgowns, drifting past on hangers, each representing a child, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

On our last night, before flying home from Hanover, we dined in the Rat Catcher’s House on the infamous and very un-Disney delicacy of flambéed rats’ tails (strips of pork fillet, allegedly) and compared notes on the trip.

Daddy’s favourite aspect was the architecture. The 10 year-old declared the experience “the most interesting history holiday ever” and the four year-old cited cuddling the bunnies as her best bit. Still, at least they were real as opposed to cartoon rabbits.

GETTING THERE

Ryanair (ryanair.com) offers flights to Frankfurt Hahn from £17.99 one way. AirBerlin (airberlin.com) offers flights to Frankfurt am Main from £90 one way. Germanwings (germanwings.com) offers flights to Hanover from £51 one way. Avis (0844 581 0147; avis.co.uk) has car hire in Germany from £311 for six days.

Steinau an der Strasse The puppet theatre Die Holzkoeppe performs atmospheric fairy tales for children and adults in Schloss Steinau throughout the year. Every day except Mondays (666 3245).

Hamelin An enactment of the legend of the Pied Piper takes place from May to September every Sunday at noon in the main pedestrian area in front of the Renaissance Hochzeitshaus (Wedding House) in the Old Town. Every Wednesday at 4.30pm, the amateur, slapstick Pied Piper musical Rats is performed, also by the Hochzeitshaus.

Bremen The Bremen Town Musicians strike up every Sunday at noon by the Liebfrauenkirche (church) and tell their story with music. From May until September.